Ala Buzreba at the 2015 Calgary Stampede, July 4, 2015. Buzreba withdrew August 21, 2015 as a Liberal candidate for Calgary-Nose Hill, after she faced criticism for offensive tweets she wrote as a teenager. Buzreba, 21, wrote the tweets four years ago. (@votealabuzreba)

Should adults be held accountable for things they said or did on social media as teenagers?

Millennials (born roughly between 1980 and the late 1990s) are the first generation to grow up with the Internet. Ultimately, this will be a question for them to grapple with. They are not only on the front lines of a technological revolution, but are also actively shaping a new professional reality — one where everyone’s images and words are online for the world to see.

For those who decide to make the leap into politics today, this can be particularly damning.

Ala Buzreba, the 21-year-old former Liberal candidate for Calgary Nose Hill who stepped down after apologizing “without reservation” for a series of offensive tweets she made several years ago, is experiencing this first hand. Her comments that circulated last week include one to a staunch defender of Israel: “Your mother should have used that coat hanger” and responding to a racist tweet with “go blow your brains out you waste of sperm.”

“I have posted a lot of content on social media over the years, and like many teenagers, I did so without really taking the time to think through my words and weigh the implications,” she wrote.

(It warrants mentioning that there are two sides to every story. According to a Facebook post by her sister Zehra Tajouri, Buzreba had been bullied in her teens by adults on social media calling her a “terrorist,” “raghead slut” and telling her she should “go back to where she came from.” This prompted Buzreba to respond with the tweets that eventually forced her to drop out of the race, according to her sister.)

Buzreba is neither the first nor the only young person to have her online archive have an impact on her political ambitions.

Recall the 2014 Quebec election, when an old photo of the CAQ’s Steven Fleurent — who, like Buzreba, was a 21-year-old candidate — surfaced showing him perched naked on a toilet with his underwear around his ankles, grinning and giving a thumbs-up for the camera. Or Wiliam Moughrabi, the current federal Conservative candidate for the riding of Ahuntsic-Cartierville, who recently deleted his Facebook account after aggressive posts he made in 2014 came to light. (One example: “Karma takes too long, I’d rather beat the s**t out of you now.”)

Luckily, I’ve never had to deal with mistakes I made in high school or my early 20s being permanently etched into my professional record. But that’s only because the Internet wasn’t a big deal back then; I didn’t even have an email address until my first year as an undergraduate student. It’s a different story today.

A 2014 studyindicated that 93 per cent of Canadian Internet users age 18 to 34 are on Facebook and more than half are on Twitter. The fear of having your entire social media record dragged out in a political campaign is a legitimate one.

But therein lies the challenge: We need Millennials to get involved in politics. They represent over one-third of Canada’s population and are the largest demographic cohort to follow the baby boomers. Lost among the many things people say about Millennials — that they’re entitled, narcissistic and in need of constant validation — is the fact that they are smart, innovative, resilient and keen to make a difference in the world. Yet while approximately 48 per cent of Canadian youth are following politics, public policy or social issues on the Internet and through social media, many of them are opting out of traditional political institutions.

True, Buzreba’s comments were inappropriate and offensive. Being young isn’t an excuse. But I know many adults who said and did things as teenagers that don’t represent who they are today. The positive thing is that she acknowledged and took full responsibility for her past mistakes. That alone is a rare and admirable trait for a budding politician.

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